human right.

Recently I read an article in the local newspaper concerning gun rights and gun control protests (http://www.martinsvillebulletin.com/article.cfm?ID=31715&back=archives)

This part really got to me:

About 200 people attended a rally by the pro-gun Virginia Citizens Defense League, which is advocating a package of bills that would eliminate or relax restrictions on carrying concealed weapons and allow guns on state college campuses. Most wore stickers saying “Guns Save Lives,” and some openly carried handguns or rifles.

“The right to bear arms is a fundamental human right,” said Clint Kritzer, a member of the gun-rights group’s board of directors.

A gun-control group, the Virginia Center for Public Safety, also lobbied legislators and held a vigil for victims of gun violence.


I don't know your position on gun control. I feel there are valid arguments on both sides. But this post isn't about the merits or controversy surrounding that issue. What really got to me about this article is when the man said "The right to bear arms is a fundamental human right."

Really? A fundamental human right?

It astonishes me that someone can be so out of touch with the issues facing our world. For one thing, the right to own a gun, carry a gun, whatever, is not a "fundamental human right". It is a constitutional right. Protest and discuss all you want, but please do not call it a basic, essential right necessary for humanity. As I said, there are legitimate concerns and arguments for both sides of the coin. It is an important discussion and the gun rights and gun control issues are relevant to our society today. They merit discussion and compromise, as all issues do.

But to me, there are far more significant fundamental human rights which are being abused and neglected across our world. Millions upon millions of our global neighbors are starving, dying of thirst and exposure and lack of adequate sanitation. A billion people in this world don't have clean water. Countless children die every day from starvation. Tens of millions are sold into slavery.

Starvation. Disease. Poverty. These are issues we should be bringing to light. Fundamental human rights are necessary for our survival. And too many people around this world are literally dying without them. I know the reasons behind the poverty and destruction in our world, the withholding of these rights from millions, are varied and multi-layered. But we need to stand in solidarity with the poor, the oppressed, the downtrodden, the hungry, the sick, the alone.

If we're going to protest in support of "fundamental human rights", and I pray we do, we need to be aware of just what those rights really are. 


For I was hungry, and you fed me. I was thirsty, and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger, and you invited me into your home. I was naked, and you gave me clothing. I was sick, and you cared for me. I was in prison, and you visited me. ... I tell you the truth, when you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me. - Matthew 25:35-36, 40

making everything new

Well, I'm (almost) an employee of FleetwoodGoldcoWyard in Lynchburg, VA. All I have to do is fill out the acceptance letter and inform the HR representative. My first official fulltime job after graduation. I chose this position over a place in Pennsylvania for a variety of reasons. But anyway, you could say it's the biggest life/career/location decision I've made since I decided to attend Tech. And a great way to start 2012.

God spoke through the prophet Isaiah (43:19): "For I am about to do something new. See, I have already begun! Do you not see it? I will make a pathway through the wilderness. I will create rivers in the dry wasteland."

So here goes. I can't really comprehend it yet. I am excited and nervous about the new opportunities and challenges that are about to begin. The only thing I know for sure is that the God who has brought me through college and through life so far is actively working among the people and situations I'll run into in a few weeks. I can't wait to see what's next. Throughout my life He has been making things new, whether it is my friends, my relationships, my thought processes, and my perspective on life. One thing I've learned is that life is very dynamic; it always changes from day to day. May I have the courage and determination to walk through these changes with peace and boldness.

In the words of my friend Franklin, "God is leading us, He is guiding us, He is with us, and He is for us. That changes everything."

Living life

I often journey to Wendy's to grab some food. I can't count the number of times in Blacksburg I walked or drove over to the building on the corner of Price's Fork and North Main. Since school, though, I still make my way over for a sandwich and fries. But I digress.

In most Wendy's locations, a little box sits near the cash register for the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption. I haven't looked into it, but I'm sure its an incredible organization that needs every donation available to continue its work. You've probably seen other boxes with slots for spare change and bills as donations for different causes in other places. As I dropped my change into the slot, I started thinking about what it meant. I was dropping a few cents, the leftovers from what I paid for my meal, to help this organization. What I realized is that so often we give our spare change, our leftovers, to different causes in our lives. But how often do we give our all? How often do we go without a meal, for example, and give that money so others can eat? I don't think I have.

What I'm getting at is how in many areas of our lives we are content to give just a little, just what we have left after our needs are met. I've seen it in my own life. Seems like I do that with God sometimes. I settle for the bare minimum, whatever that may be in my own eyes, instead of working towards giving it everything I've got. Why do we do this? Is it laziness? Fear? What holds us back from living like we mean it?

I was hit with this earlier today as I stood in Wendy's waiting for my Frosty. I should live life with everything I've got. Yes, it is harder and scarier and less convenient. But everything I've learned the past few years has shown me that living life to its fullest, whatever that may mean, is definitely worth it. What do you think?

The first step is figuring out how.
The second is getting up the courage to move.

I pray we'll get up and move.

Ashley Nicole Cassell

Last Friday, 12/16/11, was the one-year anniversary of a dear friend's passing out of this life. She had incredible faith and perseverance in the midst of pain and suffering. Although her body was frail, her heart and spirit were vibrant and full of energy. She had numerous health problems since birth, many caused by a very weak immune system. All the time I knew her she was confined in a wheelchair. She had a cane and could walk and stand for short periods of time. Her health fluctuated all the time and she was in the hospital many times.

But this post isn't about the weakness of my friend's body. This post is about her showing us that life is worth living - even when nothing makes sense, our world falls around us, and pain seems a constant part of life.

Ashley loved to write and receive letters, even in this digital age. She said there was just something special about writing a letter and getting a letter someone wrote. I had the privilege to trade letters with her for three or four years before she died. Even when she couldn't write due to medication issues, she would type them and print them out to send to me and others. What struck me most, aside from her patient endurance, was her sense of hope.

I know few people who have such extreme hope. Through her trials and pain and setbacks, she held onto the joy and hopefulness that caused her to be such a light to all of us. It was incredible. She was so optimistic about the future, whether the possibility that she could walk with RGO's and enough practice, or my upcoming graduation and job hunt. Although her future was cut short by a bout of pneumonia she couldn't overcome, her optimism concerning life itself always amazed me. And continues to. When I get weighed down by the troubles in my life, I remember my friend Ashley. One of the quotes from her letters that comes to mind is from Viktor Frankl, a man who endured Nazi concentration camps and concluded that even in the worst situations, life is still potentially meaningful; so even suffering can have meaning. "He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how."

I wish you could have known her. I don't know where you stand on the whole "afterlife" thing, but I believe my friend is finally at peace, free from the physical and emotional pain that showed up each day for her. And I can't wait to take a walk with her one day. One of her last statuses was an anonymous quotation, "Peace is not the absence of affliction, but the presence of God."

the human condition

Tonight I am struck with how broken our world is. Yesterday a troubled young man shot and killed a policeman who was performing a routine traffic stop. This happened at a place which has had its share of violence and pain over the past five years. Although not directly affected by those events, my life has been shaped by them over the past four years. Countless friends I've made were hurt by that day, and I see it resurfacing with the events of this Thursday. Death and fear brought at the end of a gun. It just reminds me how broken and shattered this world has become.

Earlier today I was sitting in a waiting room at the hospital down in Winston-Salem. I have to travel there each year for them to look at my eyes (when I was a baby they did some major surgeries on my left eye). I was sitting in the waiting room for them to call me in and take some pictures. While there I noticed the rest of the chairs were filled with people who looked tired and shaken. A woman beside me was talking to another older woman sitting with her husband. He was called into the room and seemed disoriented. His wife began telling us that the past three years were harder than anything we could imagine. Her husband's only brother and only son had been diagnosed with different cancers within months of each other and had passed away recently. His daughter-in-law was going through medical difficulties as well. He himself had a debilitating medical condition and was now losing his slowly losing his sight. You could tell she was at the end of her rope and was tired of this life.

As I sat there listening to her story, the woman beside me could only place a hand on her and said she would pray for her. She then began to say that to compare her problems would be insensitive, but that she was dealing with two sons who had disabilities. Her five-year-old had a mental condition and was not expected to live more than a year from now. She herself was the victim of a home invasion last month and was beaten unconscious. She said that's why she was at the hospital today; to see if her sight would be permanently damaged.

Both women sat in silence and I pleaded with God for something to say, some words of comfort to pour into their lives. But the magnitude of their suffering overwhelmed me. As I listened, I wondered how they could get up each morning and face the day. The woman beside me said "I keep asking God why He keeps putting me through this. He knows I don't have a big 'S' on my chest. There's no cape on my back. I'm not Superman." She asked me about my story this year, and I mentioned how I had recently graduated from Tech. Naturally the events of yesterday came up, and we discussed them briefly. We agreed that this world in which we live is very difficult. More difficult than I had ever realized sometimes. The woman beside me talked about how people we see every day can be going through such fierce battles in their lives and we never know it. The pain and exhaustion in both women's eyes were evident. I thought we had reached a point where mere words weren't enough.

Then I remembered a quote from Mother Teresa that I was able to paraphrase for them. "I know God won't give me anything I can't handle, but I just wish He didn't trust me so much."

The feelings behind that statement won't make the pain go away. They won't make life turn rosy and perfect for these women and their families. But the moment of laughter brought a smile to their faces. Maybe it was a reminder that the darkness we walk through isn't complete.

Shortly afterward I was called into the room and once the pictures were taken I was back in the hallway by the waiting room. The two women I had been talking with were gone, and the room was filled with other families. I never got their names, and I doubt I'll ever see them again, but I'm sure their stories will stick with me. We don't have the answers for why life is so hard, or why terrible things happen to good people, but we can have hope. You can call it coincidence, but I feel there was a reason I was in that waiting room this morning. The doctor I was seeing decided to have them take pictures of my eyes, something they hadn't done since 2004. I was next to a woman who was open and honest about discussing her life with total strangers, which reminded me how we are built for community. We can't make it through the hardships of this world without community, whether it be close friends or complete strangers.

So I sit here and try to put all this together.

We live in a shattered world.
But we have a hope that transcends the brokenness.

What we need

"Thank You for being the God You are, the God we need, not the God we want You to be."

The above words popped into my head a couple days ago. Sometimes when we take things into our own hands, thinking that our way is best, it doesn't end too well. You can apply that to many aspects of life, spiritual or otherwise. But as I sit here it occurs to me that so often we want God to do something our way, to give us what we think is best, to show up and act the way we feel he should, and to approve our choices and decisions while disregarding the fact that he may have another idea. I stand in awe that God does not bend to our every whim but is steadfast and intelligent enough to know what is truly best for us. Although that can be pretty hard to see sometimes. What is best for us, what we truly need, usually can seem like terrible medicine. And maybe it takes a while to see the effects.

Some would say that it is obvious that a Being as great and other-worldly as God would be set apart from us and capable of things far beyond our ability to grasp and comprehend. And yet I find over and over again that this God who could form the heavens actually takes an interest in our lives here on this bit of rock floating through space. He concerns himself with our endeavors and cares about our problems. Jesus spoke about telling God the things that you need, the problems you face, the worries that consume you, and he would handle them. Maybe not how we would have thought, maybe not how we would have at all; but the important part is that God supplies our needs.

“And my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus. To our God and Father be glory for ever and ever. Amen.” – Philippians 4:19-20

So many times we want God to do something, to act a certain way, to intervene at a certain point. And then we get discouraged when he doesn't. We get frustrated when it seems like things are crashing down around us. Or when the timing isn't right. Or when things happen that we thought he could prevent or fix. May we take comfort and, more importantly, hope, in the promise that he may not be predictable, but he will be there for us and he will act according to his timing and his purpose.

Truth can set you free.

Within the past week I have noticed that many of my friends have faced and are in the midst of facing some very hard and difficult times that range from relationship issues to sobering life questions and decisions. Years ago a man who has become a very close friend told me that I had the gift of encouragement. Whether you believe spiritual gifts to be divinely inspired or born of personality traits I'll let you decide. As for me, I feel it is a spiritual gift God has given me to reach into others' lives and brighten them. Just part of the story God is writing with my life.

What amazes and inspires me is that in a few short days I have realized the importance of pouring truth into people's lives within whatever situation they may find themselves. Whether it was a relationship that was wreaking havoc on the heart and causing self-doubt and disillusionment, or difficulties in life that were shaking confidence in even our deepest faith, my friends were facing situations I have never quite experienced. But I found that truth, in all its many forms, could be a powerful remedy. Because truth can remind us of things we've always known but may have forgotten, it can comfort us in our darkest hour, and it can give us something solid to stand on as we pull ourselves from the darkness.

The past few days I've reminded friends that they are beautiful, that they are strong, that they deserve better than what they are settling for, and that I am glad to be their friend. I've reminded them that our God stands close to us even in our worst times. We bear the image of the divine. We can hold onto love regardless of how someone has hurt us. I'm reminded that I cannot look at people for who they are or what they have done to me or those I care about, but I must look at them for what they are. For what I am. A shattered image of God. A forgiven and resurrected soul.

I ask you, look around and see the people in your life. We all need love and encouragement. Truth can bring that. Pray and think and ask and figure out how you can, as Jim Pace would say, "punch into someone's soul" with the words they need to hear. It can change everything.

Some words from Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Everybody can be great... because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.”